Email 8/5/17
Hello everybody,
As most transfer weeks are, this week was crazy. After six months of serving in Motril, I’ve left the familiarity of my surroundings there and am now in Jaén! It’s only about a two hour bus ride inland from the Motril coast, but it’s definitely different. The weather here is a lot warmer and drier. Additionally, Jaén is built on the side of a mountain, and there are steep hills EVERYWHERE here, especially in our area. Also, Jaén is one of the highest exporting parts of the world of olive oil, so there are so many olive trees everywhere surrounding the city, and because of that, we’ve had some problems with allergies, but we’re bought some medicine which is helping. Jaén is a super cool place though. It’s got a city feel, but you can still see past the buildings to the mountains. There’s also a ton of parks and green spaces in our area. I love it.
Like I said in my last email, Elder Moffat is my new companion. He’s from Las Vegas and has been out on the mission about six months less that I have. Last week, we thought that we were going to be staying as a part of my last district in Granada, but it turns out that we’re going to be in our own district with the other two Elders here in Jaén. They are Elder Cerna, who finishes his mission in five weeks, and Elder Rigby who’s just arrived to the mission field. So we’re all at pretty different points in the mission. I’ve also been assigned to be the district leader here.
Elder Moffat and I have been working especially hard to get acquainted with our area and the people here because we’re both new here. We don’t really have any investigators, but luckily we inherited a lot of future investigators when we got here and have found even more in the last few days. People seem more open to stopping and talking to us than they were in Motril, even if they’re not interested. Our goal for this coming week is going to be converting some of our futuros into investigators.
I definitely have forgotten the perks of serving in a ward and having the support of so many members behind us. The ward here seems really great and really happy to help us missionaries. There was a baptism here on Saturday; the grown up granddaughter of one of the members in the ward was baptized. I played the piano for it. It was a good opportunity to meet a lot of members and their families.
Things are going really good so far. I was a bit nervous about this change, given the whitewash situation, but I’m really excited to be in Jaėn. I started reading the Book of Mormon over again recently, and I noticed for the first time how cool of a scripture 1 Nephi 7:12 is. It says, “Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him.” There is such straightforwardness to the gospel. We keep the commandments and we exercise faith, and we will be blessed. I felt a lot of those blessings this week, especially with everything that’s happened in our new area.
Love,
Élder Stark ??
Photos
1: Last photo with the Granada district. Hermana Woods, Hermana Gentry; Elder Pack, Elder Ramirez, Elder Morgan, Elder Stark, Elder Cox, Elder De La Rosa, Elder Bird
2: Elder Pack and myself and Alberto
3: Last night in Motril
4: The member who was driving me from the bus station to our piso got ticketed for talking on his phone.
5-7: Scenes from Jaén
8: Elder Moffat and I
9-10: More scenes from Jaén
11: Baptism
12: Until next time
